Reflections at the Intersection of American History, Religion, Politics, and Academic Life

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

The Original Lyrics to the Star-Spangled Banner

Rebecca Onion of Slate's The Vault blog provides us with an early draft of Francis Scott Key's Star-Spangled Banner and offers some historical context. I'll bet most of you did not know about all of these extra verses. Here is a taste of Onion's piece followed by her transcript of one of Key's earlier drafts of the song:Of the three less-familiar verses, the third is the most interesting. It taunts the British Army, referring to the invaders as the “band who so vauntingly swore/that the havoc of war & the battle’s confusion” would strip Americans of “a home & a Country.” By calling them a “band,” rather than an army, Key diminishes the status of the British forces, whose “blood has wash’d out their foul footsteps’ pollution.”Key’s association of the British Army with “hirelings and slaves” was meant to be an insult. As historian Kevin Levinwrites, the British Army liberated enslaved people in the Chesapeake region and recruited them as soldiers during the War of 1812. To Key, “freemen,” as he calls Americans, were to be lauded for their patriotic convictions, while slaves who enlisted to gain their personal liberation were to be disdained. The transcript:

Oh say can you see through by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming
Whose broad stripes & bright stars through the perilous fight
O’er the ramparts we watch’d, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bomb bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there
O say does that star spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free & the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream,
‘Tis the star-spangled banner – O long may it wave
O’er the land of the free & the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore,
That the havoc of war & the battle’s confusion
A home & a Country should leave us no more ?
Their blood has wash’d out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling & slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free & the home of the brave.

O thus be it ever when freeman shall stand
Between their lov’d home & the war’s desolation
Blest with vict’ry & peace may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the power that hath made & preserv’d us as a nation!
Then conquer we must when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto – “In God is our trust,”
And the Star-Spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free & the home of the brave.